Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(30)

Like Mr. Barrow’s.”

Erainya had used many adjectives to describe her late husband. Honest was not one of them.

“I’m not his friend, se?ora, ” I said. “Just a friend of the family.”

“Tel him not to worry. We did the right thing. It was not a lie.”

“Se?ora?”

“Stirman lured many others to a similar fate. It is the same, whether he served this devil or some other.”

It had been a long time since I’d felt unsure of my Spanish, but I wasn’t certain I’d understood her correctly.

I set down my coffee.

“Se?ora, how did you come to this ranch?”

“The Green Highway.”

“?Mande?”

“The power lines.”

I knew what she meant. The power line poles that ran through the South Texas plains were kept clear of brush and cactus, making a perfect path for il egal immigrants who wanted to stay off the roads without getting lost. The Green Highway. A determined il egal could walk for hundreds of miles along those grassy corridors, straight into Uvalde or San Antonio.

“So . . . you never met Wil Stirman?”

She shook her head, her expression apologetic. “McCurdy would not trust someone else to pick his women. He knew what he wanted—the kind who made him angry. He would pretend to be a border agent and search the Green Highway himself. He separated me from two friends, promised to let them go if I cooperated. I thought I knew what he wanted. I was wrong. He brought me here. He went slowly with me. My blindness excited him, I think. But it also made him careless. He did not remember the lock, the third night.”

She related the story without faltering, without showing any emotion other than grim satisfaction. I imagined her alone in the dark, tired and beaten and bloody, escaping and stumbling down to the river, fol owing it as she’d fol owed the power lines, trusting her sense of direction to lead her out of McCurdy’s property. Somehow, she had found help. She had made the sheriff believe her.

“After al that,” I said, “you chose to come back. You made a home . . . here.”

“You cannot move away from the dead, se?or. When I spoke against Stirman, I spoke for al of the women like me. I live here now for al of them.”

I could translate the words, but her meaning seemed alien to me. I could not imagine doing what she had done.

“Stirman wil come after you,” I said. “He wil not be kind.”

She turned her face to receive a wet breeze from the window. I realized she knew more about pain and fear than I could ever imagine. I could say nothing that would scare her.

“This is my home,” she said. “Velo tú.”

I looked at the garlic ristras, the sunlight on the cornflower wal s, the pot of steaming water on the stovetop. I did see.

Gloria Paz had exorcised fear from this place—from this small part of McCurdy’s ranch. I wondered if that was why the new owner had al owed her to live here. Gloria had succeeded where he had failed.

“Tel Mr. Barrow to come visit,” Gloria Paz said. “It has been too many years. He can bring me more shotgun ammunition. Tel him not to despair.”

Only then did I realize who she reminded me of—her small frame, her stubborn expression, the tense set of her shoulders, as if she were ready to lead a charge. She reminded me of Erainya.

I managed to say, “I’l tel him.”

Sam Barrera came back inside. He muttered an apology. He slipped the cel phone into his pocket, looked around the room as if he’d misplaced something.

“Are we done?” he asked me.

It seemed a strange thing to say, since he hadn’t participated in any of the conversation. Perhaps he could see from my expression that I’d learned what I needed to know. Or perhaps he saw the goat’s milk and Folgers on the stovetop and decided not to risk it.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I guess we’re done.”

On the drive back through Castrovil e, we passed our friend the deputy. He was leaning against the hood of his unit, supervising a group of men placing sandbags across the entrance of Haby’s Bavarian Bakery.

He tipped his hat to us. I imagined he was congratulating himself on being right—the city folk were beating a hasty retreat after a hopeless visit with the crazy woman.

The hil s retreated behind us. I waited for Barrera to speak.

When he didn’t, I said, “You framed Wil Stirman. Gloria Paz lied for you.”

Just when I thought he wasn’t going to acknowledge my statement, he said, “So now you know.”

“At the risk of sounding rude—were you f**king insane?”

“Did you miss the chains?” Sam asked. “The bloodstains on the wal ?”

“That was McCurdy. Wil Stirman had nothing to do with those women.”

“Not those women, maybe. But a thousand others. He sent them to sweatshops, brothels, slave ranches.

Fred and I knew. We had both crossed paths with Stirman before. He was a monster. This was our chance.”

“You used the public outrage about the McCurdy case. Your clients wanted a scapegoat and you knew Stirman was an easy sel .”

“We started the investigation thinking it was him. Fred and I both. When we found out . . . Gloria admitted there was no supplier. McCurdy handpicked the women he wanted. Fred and I were too far along at that point. We’d gotten in Stirman’s face. We’d already convinced a couple of his men to turn on him and provide evidence. How did we know they were lying? That they just wanted an excuse to divide up the boss’s business? After we realized the truth, we decided . . . what the hel ? Gloria was wil ing to cooperate.